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NEW YORK - The AIDS virus has been circulating among people for about 100 years, decades longer than scientists had thought, a new study suggests. Genetic analysis pushes the estimated origin of HIV back to between 1884 and 1924, with a more focused estimate at 1908.

Previously, scientists had estimated the origin at around 1930. AIDS wasn't recognized formally until 1981 when it got the attention of public health officials in the United States.

The new result is "not a monumental shift, but it means the virus was circulating under our radar even longer than we knew," says Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, an author of the new work.

The results appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Researchers note that the newly calculated dates fall during the rise of cities in Africa, and they suggest urban development may have promoted HIV's initial establishment and early spread.

Scientists say HIV descended from a chimpanzee virus that jumped to humans in Africa, probably when people butchered chimps. Many individuals were probably infected that way, but so few other people caught the virus that it failed to get a lasting foothold, researchers say.

But the growth of African cities may have changed that by putting lots of people close together and promoting prostitution, Worobey suggested. "Cities are kind of ideal for a virus like HIV," providing more chances for infected people to pass the virus to others, he said.

Perhaps a person infected with the AIDS virus in a rural area went to what is now Kinshasa, Congo, "and now you've got the spark arriving in the tinderbox," Worobey said.

Key to the new work was the discovery of an HIV sample that had been taken from a woman in Kinshasa in 1960. It was only the second such sample to be found from before 1976; the other was from 1959, also from Kinshasa.

Researchers took advantage of the fact that HIV mutates rapidly. So two strains from a common ancestor quickly become less and less alike in their genetic material over time. That allows scientists to "run the clock backward" by calculating how long it would take for various strains to become as different as they are observed to be. That would indicate when they both sprang from their most recent common ancestor.

The new work used genetic data from the two old HIV samples plus more than 100 modern samples to create a family tree going back to these samples' last common ancestor. Researchers got various answers under various approaches for when that ancestor virus appeared, but the 1884-to-1924 bracket is probably the most reliable, Worobey said.

The new work is "clearly an improvement" over the previous estimate of around 1930, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. His institute helped pay for the work.

Fauci described the advance as "a fine-tuning."

Experts say it's no surprise that HIV circulated in humans for about 70 years before being recognized. An infection usually takes years to produce obvious symptoms, a lag that can mask the role of the virus, and it would have infected relatively few Africans early in its spread, they said.

Live Love Laugh and dance like no ones watching.Laughter is the best medicine, so try to have a laugh everyday..Even if your not feeling your best, think about something that was funny at one time in your life and work with it.. )

What a load of crap! It didn't take long for the symptoms to appear for me. How could a disease as devastating as Aids go under the radar for so long without raising some kind of red flag. Why all of a sudden did the disease start to spread rapidly in 1981? Weren't the 70s just as bad? As sneaky as the gov't is, I still hold the belief that the virus was created by scientists, an experiment to weed out the undesireables which went haywire. Sex is complicated and most people back in the 70s and early 80s might not have realized this. They probably thought gay men had sex with gay men and nobody else, but the more I live my life the more that I discover that everyone is different. I know I'm probably going to get blasted on this site for my opinion but it is just an opinion. I used to buy into the fact that this disease was created from monkeys but come on! But that is just buying into what the gov't wants us to believe. I just hope that one day I live to see the day that this disease is gone for good but I don't think that day will come anytime soon. Thanks for your time.

What a load of crap! It didn't take long for the symptoms to appear for me. How could a disease as devastating as Aids go under the radar for so long without raising some kind of red flag.

Maybe the answer to this question is related to promiscuity. Behavourial changes may put the virus under selective pressure. In the beginning, when the virus was confined to small villages where the opportunity of having several sexual partners in a short period of time was absent, a strainf of the virus that would kill in a few years would have significantly less chance to spread, compared to a less agressive strain, that would kill in a few decades, or that simply would kill so slowly, that the span of a lifetime would not be enough for symptoms to appear.

Now, in the context of big cities where the opportunity of having several sexual partners in a short span of time is much greater, this selective pressure in favour of less aggressive strains would be absent, so that "being less aggressive" would cease to be an advantageous characteristic for the virus, allowing more agressive strains to thrive.

As sneaky as the gov't is, I still hold the belief that the virus was created by scientists, an experiment to weed out the undesireables which went haywire.

I do not think that there was technology available in the seventies to create such a virus. Also, there would have to be a large number of people involved in a project of such dimensions, so that keeping it secret woud be impraticable.

9% of the entire human genome are Retrovirus fragments that got stuck in our DNA in last 300 million years, there is evidence that a proto hiv virus a Retrovirus existed and infected sharks 150 million years ago, one reason shark immune systems are powerful

there are ten times as many microbe cells in and on the human body than human cells

some rare diseases that only effect ten people in usa per year they have found are because, bits of these Retrovirus fragments break off and start to replicate in a way similar to hiv and cause a disease

called exogeneous (sp) virus or disease

so it is completely logical and normal that this hiv retrovirus was evolving along side humans and primates for centuries

cats have an hiv type virus, so do most primates have thier own version SIV, also cows and evenmany other animals have an hiv like virus that attacks them

this is true and clear science

if you do not believe the first post in this thread , this new discovery, you will need about 3 months of science reading to catch up with the modern world

ExogenousThe following genera are included here:Genus Alpharetrovirus; type species: Avian leukosis virusGenus Betaretrovirus; type species: Mouse mammary tumour virusGenus Gammaretrovirus; type species: Murine leukemia virus; others include Feline leukemia virusGenus Deltaretrovirus; type species: Bovine leukemia virus; others include the cancer-causing Human T-lymphotropic virusGenus Epsilonretrovirus; type species: Walleye dermal sarcoma virusGenus Lentivirus; type species: Human immunodeficiency virus 1; others include Simian, Feline immunodeficiency virusesGenus Spumavirus; type species: Chimpanzee foamy virusThese were previously divided into three subfamilies (Oncovirinae, Lentivirinae, and Spumavirinae), but with current knowledge of retroviruses, this is no longer appropriate. (The term oncovirus is still commonly used, though.)[edit]EndogenousMain article: endogenous retrovirusEndogenous retroviruses are not formally included in this classification system, and are broadly classified into three classes, on the basis of relatedness to exogenous genera:Class I are most similar to the gammaretrovirusesClass II are most similar to the betaretroviruses and alpharetrovirusesClass III are most similar to the spumaviruses

PrevalenceHTLV-I infection in the United States appears to be about half as prevalent as HIV infection among IV drug users and about one-tenth as prevalent in the population at large. Although little serologic data exist, prevalence of infection is thought to be highest among blacks living in the Southeast. A prevalence rate of 30% has been found among black intravenous drug abusers in New Jersey, and a rate of 49% has been found in a similar group in New Orleans.[2] It is possible that prevalence of infection is increasing in this risk group.HTLV-I infection in Australia is very high among the Indigenous peoples of central and northern Australia, with a prevalence rate of 10-30%. It is also high among the Inuit of Northern Canada.Japan, in northeastern Iran,[3] in Peru, in the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador, in the Caribbean, and in Africa.

DNA virusesJC virus has been found in malignant colon tumors and may be linked to colon cancer.[citation needed]Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a DNA virus, causes transformation in cells through interfering with tumor suppressor proteins such as p53. Interfering with the action of p53 allows a cell infected with the virus to move into a different stage of the cell cycle allowing the virus genome to be replicated forcing the cell into the S phase of the cell cycle could cause the cell to become transformed.[1] It increases risk of e.g. cervical cancer.Human herpes virus 8 is associated with Kaposiís sarcoma, a type of skin cancer.[2]Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) is associated with four types of cancers